Countywide voting centers may be arriving in Baxter County earlier than originally anticipated.

An ordinance that would convert the county from individual polling sites to countywide voting centers was read twice Tuesday night by the Baxter County Quorum Court.

A third reading and vote on whether to adopt the voting centers model is expected at the Quorum Court’s next meeting at 6 p.m. on Sept. 4 in the second-floor courtroom of the county courthouse.

In counties holding elections with voting centers, citizens are not required to report to a specific polling site to cast their ballot. Instead, they may visit any polling site in the county on election day to vote. Presently, there are 21 counties operating with voting centers, including Marion and Boone counties.

The voting center ordinance read twice Tuesday night was submitted by the Baxter County Election Commission, the entity charged with organizing and conducting local elections.

Last month, the Election Commission proposed consolidating the county’s voting locations from 22 sites to 10 as the first step towards eventually converting the county over to the voting center model. At that time, the commission said that the state had found 10 of the county’s voting sites did not fully comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act and would be ineligible to host future elections without bringing them into compliance.

“If we are changing 10 of our voting sites anyway, we are proposing that we go ahead and just do it,” Election Commission chairman Judy Garner told the Quorum Court about adopting voting centers.

Under the Election Commission’s proposal, on Election Day it would open 11 voting centers capable or recording votes from any precinct. Those locations would include Wesley United Methodist Church in Cotter; Lone Rock Baptist Church on Push Mountain Road; Big Flat City Hall; Salesville City Hall; the Norfork Community Center; the Charles R. Newton Emergency Services Training Center in Midway; Eastside Baptist Church in Mountain Home; Christ Community Church in Mountain Home; the Baxter County Courthouse in Mountain Home; the Henderson Fire Department; and the Northeast Lakeside Fire Department.

Voters would also have 13 days of early voting, with their choice of two locations: the county courthouse or at Christ Community Church.

Baxter County Clerk Canda Reese stressed the convenience of voting early to the Quorum Court audience Tuesday night. Most county residents pass through Mountain Home at some point during the 13 days of early voting, she said.

“If you voted early while you were in town, it would be a moot point where your Election Day polling site is,” Reese said.

County residents unable to make it into town to early vote or unable of reaching one of the proposed voting sites should contact the County Clerk’s Office to request an absentee ballot, she said. Absentee ballots can be mailed to a voter or given to a designated bear to hand-deliver the ballot.

“My big concern — and what people have told me — is they are not concerned with having to drive an extra 5 or 10 miles to vote, but it’s the large amount of people trying to vote,” Election Commission member Bob Bodenhamer said. “We’ve taken several places and combined them; now you’ve got one place but you still have all those voters. As the Election Commission, we will have to assure everyone that we will have the workers and the machines to handle this. That’s the important part.”

During the 2016 presidential election, a polling site in Lakeview ran out of paper ballots, leaving voters there to cast their ballots on a single electronic voting machine. The bottleneck resulted in a waiting time of more than three hours for some people to vote.

“That’s just not going to cut it. It’s not going to work,” Bodenhamer told the Quorum Court. “People will have your jobs, and people will have our jobs. We’ve got to make sure we do it right.”

The county presently has 52 voting machines available for use on Election Day. The Election Commission would operate 40 voting machines spread across the 11 voting center sites on election days, with each site having at least two voting machines. Voting centers in Mountain Home and Midway would have five machines apiece, while the voting center in Cotter would operate with four machines. Four other sites would each have three voting machines, and voting sites in Big Flat and Lone Rock would each have two machines.

The Election Commission has scheduled a series of public meetings to discuss the proposed changes to the county’s election system. A public meeting will be held in Cotter at City Hall on Thursday at 6 p.m., and meetings will be held at the Baxter County Courthouse at 10 a.m. on Friday, Aug. 17; at 2 p.m. on Monday, Aug. 20; and at 6 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 30.

Garner said she was trying to schedule additional meetings with other towns, but had yet to finalize those plans with the towns’ mayors.

“I think a lot of people will be for this, and I know some people will be against it … I just want it to be as friendly as it can be,” Mountain Home mayor Joe Dillard told the Quorum Court and the Election Commission on Tuesday night. “I ask that you go slow and let the people comment on it.”

John Barnes, chairman of the Baxter County Democratic Club, said he felt “really good” about the information that was presented Tuesday night.

“We just want input from the public. This is something that is going to change the complexity of Baxter County for decades,” he said, while also asking that the Quorum Court consider the elderly and the disabled before making a final decision on the voting center proposal. “I just do not want them to think that we’re ignoring them.”

The Quorum Court is merely deciding whether the county should adopt the voting center concept. Specific items like the location of the voting sites or the number of machines at each location fall under the jurisdiction of the Election Commission, which submits a voting center to the Arkansas Secretary of State’s Office for final approval.

Details like the number of voting machines at a specific location, or even the number of voting sites, can be modified by the Election Commission on a case-by-case basis each election.

Public meetings

so far four public meetings have been scheduled to discuss the idea of Baxter County adopting voting centers for elections:

THURSDAY

Cotter City Hall, 6 p.m.

AUG. 17

Baxter County Courthouse, 10 a.m.

AUG. 20

Baxter County Courthouse, 2 p.m.

AUG. 30

Baxter County Courthouse, 6 p.m.

Proposed voting locations

The Baxter County Election Commission is proposing to consolidate the county’s 22 polling sites into 11 voting centers. Those locations would be: